Houthis use migrants to add fuel to Yemen’s simmering coals

Mohamed al-Arif

“I left my country in 2015 after the war, escaping all the problems I faced there and in search of better living and security conditions. When I arrived here, Yemen’s conditions were difficult already. I am without work. I receive no support and I do not have enough money to return home. This is the case of a large number of people.”

This was how African migrant Mohamed al-Zubaidi summed up his condition in Yemen. He and other African migrants are caught in the middle of the war in the Arab state.

Yemen has the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, according to the United Nations. African migrants converge onto the war-torn state in considerable numbers. Some of them die in the middle of the road. Others arrive in Yemen to find themselves part of this intolerable crisis.

The arrival of migrants from the Horn of African in Yemen has raised concerns over the possibility of using these migrants in the war which has been raging on in the Arab state for more than five years now, according to Rudaw Media Network.

Rampant poverty and conflicts in African states tempt a large number of people to leave, the network said.

Mukhtar Ghobashi, an advisor of local think tank Arab Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said chaos is always a fertile soil for terrorism to take root and grow.

Earlier this month, international media sources revealed that the Turkish base in Mogadishu oversees the smuggling of people from Somalia and other African states into Yemen.

The sources noted that Turkish and Muslim Brotherhood figures oversee the smuggling of these Africans, using the International Organization for Migration in this regard.

The Houthi militia has, meanwhile, started drawing in the African migrants in a way that shows their future plan to depend on African mercenaries in their military operations with the aim of making up for the human losses they sustain every day.

The Houthi militia has specified a large plot of land for setting up a refugee camp where hundreds of refuges from Somalia and Eritrea can live, according to sources in Yemeni capital Sana’a.

They added that the militia has also specified a training camp for the refugees. They said the militia also forced the United Nations refugee agency to finance the camp.

This raised fears that the Houthis will recruit the African migrants in their ongoing operations in Yemen.

According to international migration agencies, there are around 300,000 migrants in Yemen. These migrants, the agencies said, lack protection and suffer bad conditions.

Ali Tayseer, a senior official of the Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights, estimated the number of African migrants in Yemen at more than a million.

Mohamed Ezzeddine, an African affairs specialist, said Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia are the countries from which most of the migrants in Yemen come.

“The war in Yemen has contributed to opening the borders of the Arab state more,” Ezzeddine said. “This caused the movement of the migrants into the country to increase,” he told The Reference.